Surgical Pricing Strategies: How QSRs Can Navigate Inflation | Modern Restaurant Management | The Business of Eating & Restaurant Management News

Has consumer dining behavior returned to pre-pandemic levels? Many standard indices say yes. While it’s understandable to believe everything is back to normal – according to our QSR monthly trends, August 2023 traffic was down just half a percent compared to 2022 – the landscape has taken a seismic shift.

Using the QSR traffic and sales data Revenue Management Solutions (RMS) has been gathering for 25-plus years, our analysts recently completed an exhaustive comparison of pre and post-pandemic data, comparing the first two quarters of 2022 and 2023 to the same period in 2019.

The differences are drastic. For example, we noted above that in August 2023, YOY traffic was holding steady. Since 2019, however, QSR traffic has been down nearly 20% (18.4 percent) and trending downward since January 2022, when it was just 15.5 percent lower than 2019.

Also startling is the change in the QSR average check. Comparing YOY, the average check is up just seven percent. But…

Jana Zschieschang

Jana Zschieschang is Chief Marketing Officer of Revenue Management Solutions, LLC, a global enterprise providing patented, data-driven solutions and services that drive sales and profitability for over 100,000 restaurants in more than 40 countries and 20 languages. In her role, she designs global marketing and communication strategy and implementation at each of RMS’ offices in Tampa, Tokyo, Singapore, London and Paris. Before being named CMO, Zschieschang was RMS President of EMEA, where she founded RMS’s London office, quadrupled the staff and added dozens of new clients.

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Jana Zschieschang